Temporary

via Kenji Liu on Facebook.This made me smile.In the image there appear to be eleven phases of the corpse, while, as far as I can tell, the Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna Sutta describes nine.  (At least in this translation.)  Maybe there's another version it's referencing?In any case, many Buddhists still continue this ancient practice of reflecting on the impermanence of the body.

 And again, bhikkhus, if a bhikkhu should see a body, one day dead, or two days dead, or three days dead, swollen, blue and festering, discarded in the charnel ground, he then compares it to his own body thus: “Truly this body is of the same nature, it will become like that and cannot escape from it.”
Thus he dwells perceiving again and again the body just as the body in himself… Thus, bhikkhus, this is also a way in which a bhikkhu dwells perceiving again and again the body as just the body.

And now it's making its way into memes, and even onto t-shirts.Somewhat relatedly, I've been hearing disabilities justice and nursing folks use the term "temporarily able bodied" instead of the more common "able bodied."   Have you heard this phrase, too?  It strikes me as wise.  A reminder that most of us will lose our physical and/or mental faculties at some point, even before death.  ("old age, sickness, and …")